The engagement had just been announced. Catherine Middleton had given her first television interview, with Prince William sitting proudly by her side. And it was now time to plan the wedding.
Eager to include all their close friends in the great day, the young couple began to draw up the guest-list. But they found they had been pipped to the post: Buckingham Palace was there first.
He chuckles as he recalls his own sense of helplessness. ‘They said: “These are the people we should invite.” I looked at it in absolute horror and said: “I think we should start again.”’
Eventually, he realised there was only one person who could resolve the issue: the Queen herself.
The list was duly ‘binned’. And Prince William absorbed the latest of many useful lessons from his grandmother in striking that delicate balance between ‘personal’ and ‘duty’.
On other wedding matters, however, he rapidly learned that there was absolutely no room for manoeuvre. For instance, he says: ‘I wanted to decide what to wear for the wedding.’
As a commissioned officer in all three Services, and a serving member of the Royal Air Force, the Prince certainly had a few choices. Except that he did not.
This time, it was his grandmother who was laying down the law. Having just appointed Prince William to the position of Colonel of the Irish Guards, his most senior military appointment — and one of her Guards regiments to boot — the Queen was quite clear that her grandson should be getting married in his Irish Guards uniform.
In any case, as a serving officer in Her Majesty’s Armed Forces, he could hardly disobey an order from the Commander-in-Chief.
Only one other monarch has marked 60 years on the throne. Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, however, was a celebration of imperial might, featuring a reclusive Britannia figure.
As the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II nears, the mood is entirely different. One can see Queen Victoria in Highland seclusion and set in aspic. Queen Elizabeth II is walking dogs or watching a dancing display somewhere in the South Seas. She is a ‘now’ person, not a ‘then’ person.
And unlike the Queen Mother, the Queen — now 85 — has never been viewed by the public as a twinkly-eyed granny.
The future monarch certainly considers himself extremely lucky to have both his father and his grandmother to consult. Indeed, no trainee sovereign has ever had so much experience on which to draw.
‘My relationship with my grandmother has gone from strength to strength,’ he says. ‘As a shy, younger man it could be harder to talk about weighty matters. It was: “This is my grandmother who is the Queen, and these are serious historical subjects.”
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